This invention relates to a new device for transferring power in a contact-less fashion, for example electromagnetic induction.
Today's inductively-chargeable portable devices, for example the Braun Oral B Plak Control power toothbrush, must typically be precisely aligned with their charger in order to charge them. This precision is necessary so that the coil in the device is correctly aligned with the coil in the charger—the coils being, in effect, the two halves of a conventional power transformer.
Some examples of typical prior art are shown in FIG. 1. In FIG. 1a, the primary coil of the charger is aligned with the secondary coil of the device. In FIG. 1b, a horseshoe electromagnet on the charger is aligned with a similar electromagnet on the device. FIG. 1c operates in a very similar way to FIG. 1b: the field is created by two coils operating in antiphase (with the lower return circuit being an air gap), and the secondary coil is a flat wound coil. Prior art such as U.S. Pat. No. 4,873,677 works in such a fashion. Note in all cases the precise alignment that is required in order to achieve good coupling between the primary and secondary coils.
Referring now to FIG. 2 which explains some terminology used in the present application: FIG. 2a shows some charger 201 with a surface 203, the charger 201 emitting a field, and some device 202 charging from the charger 201 (and appreciating that in this figure the shapes of both are irrelevant). FIG. 2b shows that the device 202 may move about on (“be translated relative to”) the surface 203 of the charger 201 in two directions, depicted X and Y, which are at right angles to one another. The device 202 may also move nearer to and further from the charger 201 in direction Z, but as this will eventually take it out of the charging field, and this is therefore not considered here.
FIG. 2c shows that in addition to the above translations, the device 202 may rotate around the X axis (rX), the Y axis (rY) and the Z axis (rZ). In the present application, only rotations about rZ, and not those around rX or rY, shall be considered. Each of these six translations and rotations is independent from (also known as “orthogonal to”) the others, and is known as a “degree of freedom”.
FIG. 2d shows an alternative translation co-ordinate system. Instead of orthogonal (X,Y) movement, the position of the device 202 is determined by the radius (r) and the angle (θ) from some centre point. Even though θ involves rotation, it is still a translational degree of freedom, since the device 202 itself need not rotate about its own axis.
For maximum user convenience a system should allow up to five degrees of freedom—translation in the Z axis not being of practical use—so that a device 202 can be placed without regard to its position or orientation on the charger 201.
But today's toothbrush chargers and the like are typically much more constrained. Systems employing the transformer configuration shown in FIG. 1a offer one degree of freedom (rotation in the plane of the coils), and those shown in FIG. 1b and FIG. 1c offer zero degrees of freedom, since if the device is to continue to receive adequate power it cannot be either rotated nor translated relative to the charger. Having zero—or only a few—degrees of freedom requires precise alignment which may be inconvenient to the user because it requires a degree of care and manual dexterity in placing the device 202 on the charger 201.
In addition, systems lacking the translational (X and Y) degrees of freedom cannot charge multiple devices simultaneously, because of course not more than one device can occupy the required (X,Y) position at once.
In addition, such systems requiring precise primary:secondary alignment are also not a universal inductive charging solution—one able to charge devices with very different power requirements—because the different coil sizes mandated by the power needs of different types of devices will not be a good match for any single size of charger coil—see FIG. 3.
Various means of increasing the number of degrees of freedom have been proposed.
One simple method is to have a large coil in the charger, emitting a large field, allowing the device to pick-up sufficient power even if it is not perfectly aligned. FIG. 4, for example, shows such a charger coil 401 and device coil 402. This is the method adopted by various RFID devices. However the coupling between the coils 401 and 402 will be poor and highly variable dependent on position, so this solution is inefficient and limits the power that can be transferred while still complying with emission legislation. Therefore this solution is far from ideal in charging applications, where efficiency is typically an important criterion.
A solution which improves upon the efficiency of such “large coil” systems, while still offering several degrees of freedom, is to use multiple coils in the charger, enabled as appropriate, ensuring that there is always a reasonable match between nearby charger coils and the device coil. See FIG. 5, showing multiple charger coils 501 and single device coil 502. Prior art includes:                A system is described in the Journal of the Magnetics Society of Japan titled “Coil Shape in a Desk-type Contactless Power Station System” (29Nov. 2001)        
An alternative solution is the present applicant's UK patent application number 0210886.8 of 13 May 2002, which discloses a system generating a horizontal field across the surface of the charger, in contrast to conventional solutions which generate a vertical field out of the surface of the charger. A copy of equivalent International patent application no PCT/GB2003/002030 is being filed with the present application so as to form part of the file thereof, and the full contents of PCT/GB2003/002030 are hereby incorporated into the present application by reference. This offers the same two translational degrees of freedom (X and Y) as the above multiple-coil approach, but with better field uniformity and therefore worst-case efficiency. Optionally, the horizontal field may be rotated in the plane of the charger, offering an additional one degree of rotational freedom (rZ). See FIG. 6 which shows a laminar charger 601 generating a magnetic field in the plane of the charger 602 and a device 610 capable of receiving power from such a field when it is in a certain alignment 611. If the field generated by the charger is made to rotate, as shown, then there is no requirement to align the device in any particular orientation.